The Boy Who Followed Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

  The telephone rang, and Tom turned the music down and answered. It was Ralph Thurlow in Paris, wanting to know if Tom and the boy had got to Tom’s house, and Tom assured him that they had.

  “I have reservations for a twelve forty-five takeoff from Roissy tomorrow,” Thurlow said. “Can you see that Frank makes that? Is he there? I’d like to speak with him.”

  Tom looked at Frank who made a vigorously negative gesture. “He’s upstairs and I think he’s gone to bed, but I can see that he gets to Paris, certainly. What airline?”

  “TWA, flight number five six two. I think it would be simplest if Frank came to the Lutetia between ten and ten-thirty tomorrow morning, and we’ll take a taxi from here.”

  “Okay, that can be done.”

  “I didn’t mention it this afternoon, Mr. Ripley, but I’m sure you’ve had some expenses. Just inform me and I’ll see that the matter is taken care of. Write me care of Mrs. Pierson. Frank can give you her address.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will I see you tomorrow morning too? I’d rather you—uh—brought Frank here,” said Thurlow.

  “All right, Mr. Thurlow.” Tom was smiling when he hung up. He said to Frank, “Thurlow has tickets reserved for tomorrow noonish. You’re supposed to be at their hotel around ten. That’s easy. Lots of trains in the morning. Or I could drive you up.”

  “Oh, no,” said Frank politely.

  “But you’ll be there?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Tom felt a relief that he tried to hide.

  “I was thinking of asking you to come with me—but that would be the bottom, I suppose.” Frank’s hands were clenched in the pockets of his trousers, and his jaw seemed to shake.

  Come with him where, Tom wondered. “Sit down, Frank.”

  The boy didn’t care to sit down. “I’ve got to face everything, I know that.”

  “What do you mean by everything?”

  “Tell them what I did—about my father,” Frank replied, as if it were a sentence of death for himself.

  “I told you not to,” Tom said softly, though he knew that Heloise was upstairs in her room or in her bathroom at the back of the house. “You don’t have to, and you know that, so why do you bring it up again?”

  “If I had Teresa, I wouldn’t, I swear. But I haven’t even got her.”

  Here was the impasse again, Tom thought. Teresa.

  “Maybe I’ll kill myself. What else? I’m not saying this to you as a threat, some stupid threat.” He looked Tom in the eyes. “I’m just being reasonable. I thought my life out upstairs this afternoon.”

  At sixteen. Tom nodded, then said what he didn’t believe. “Teresa may not be lost. Maybe for a couple of weeks she’s interested in someone else, or thinks she is. Girls like to play, you know. But surely she knows you’re serious.”

  Frank smiled a little. “Where does that get me? This other fellow is older.”

  “Now look, Frank—” Would it do any good to keep the boy another day at Belle Ombre and try to talk some sense into him? Tom at once doubted the success of that. “The one thing you don’t have to do—is tell anyone.”

  “I think I have to decide that for myself,” Frank said with surprising coolness.

  Tom wondered if he should go to America with Frank, see him over the first day or so with his mother, make sure the boy was not going to blurt anything out? “Suppose I go with you tomorrow?”

  “To Paris?”

  “I meant to the States.” Tom had expected a relaxation of the boy’s tension, a visible lift of some kind, but Frank merely shrugged.

  “Yes, but after all what good—”

  “Frank, you’re not going to collapse.— Have you any objection to my coming with you?”

  “No. You’re really the only friend I have.”

  Tom shook his head. “I’m not your only friend, just the only person you’ve talked to. All right, I’ll come with you, and I want to tell Heloise now.— Come upstairs and get some sleep. Will you?”

  The boy came upstairs with Tom, and Tom said, “Good night, see you tomorrow,” then went to Heloise’s door and knocked. She was in bed, propped against pillows and on one elbow, reading a paperback. Tom noticed that it was their well-worn copy of Auden’s Selected Poems. She liked Auden’s poems because they were “clear,” she said. A funny time to be reading poetry, Tom thought, but maybe it wasn’t. He watched her eyes swim back to the present, to him and to Frank.

  “I’m going to the States with Frank tomorrow,” Tom said, “probably just for two or three days.”

  “Why?— Tom, you haven’t told me very much. Hardly anything.” She tossed the paperback aside, but not angrily.

  Tom suddenly realized there was something he could tell Heloise. “He’s in love with a girl in America, and the girl’s recently found somebody else, so the boy’s very depressed about that.”

  “Is that a reason why you have to go to America with him?—What really happened in Berlin? You are still protecting him from—a gang?”

  “No! A kidnapping happened in Berlin. When Frank and I were taking a walk in some woods there. Frank and I were separated for a minute or two—and they snatched him. I made a date with the kidnappers—” Tom paused. “Anyway I was able to get Frank from their apartment. He was very sleepy from sedatives—still is, a little.”

  Heloise looked incredulous. “All this in Berlin—the city?”

  “Yes, West Berlin. It’s bigger than you may think.” Tom had sat down at the foot of Heloise’s bed, but now he stood up. “And you’re not to worry about tomorrow, because I’ll be back very soon and—when is it exactly that you go on this Adventure Cruise? Not till late September, isn’t it?” Today was September first.

  “The twenty-eighth.— Tom, what is really worrying you? You think they are going to try to kidnap this boy again? The same people?”

  Tom laughed. “No, certainly not! They were like a bunch of juveniles in Berlin! Just four of them.— And I’m sure they’re scared now, lying low.”

  “You are not telling me everything.” Heloise was not angry, not taunting, but something between the two.

  “Maybe not, but I will tell you later.”

  “That’s what you said about—” Heloise stopped and looked down at her hands.

  Murchison? His disappearance, still not accounted for? The American whom Tom had killed in the cellar of Belle Ombre by hitting him with a wine bottle. A bottle of good Margaux, Tom remembered. No, he had never told Heloise about dragging Murchison’s corpse out, or told the truth about the big dark-red splotch that still refused to come out of the cement floor of their cellar, and which was not entirely due to wine. Tom had scrubbed at that spot. “Anyway—” Tom edged toward the door.

  Heloise lifted her eyes to him.

  Tom knelt by the bed, put his arms around her as much as he could, and pressed his face against the sheet that covered her.

  She brushed her fingers against his hair. “What kind of danger is this? Can’t you tell me that?”

  Tom realized that he didn’t know. “No danger at all.” He stood up. “Good night, darling.”

  When Tom went into the hall, he saw that the boy’s room light was still on. Tom was walking past, when the guest-room door opened slightly. Frank beckoned to him. Tom went in, and the boy closed the door. Frank was in pajamas, his bed was turned down, but he had not been in it.

  “I think I was a coward downstairs,” Frank said. “I think it’s the way I said things. With the wrong words. And nearly shedding tears, good Christ!”

  “So what? Never mind.”

  The boy walked across the carpet, looking down at his bare feet. “I feel like losing myself. It’s not so much killing myself as losing myself. That’s because of Teresa—I think. If I could just vaporize like steam—you know?”

  “You mean lose your identity? Lose what?”

  “Everything.— Once with Teresa I thought I’d lost my billfold.” Frank smiled suddenly. “We were hav
ing lunch at a restaurant in New York, and I wanted to pay the check and couldn’t find my billfold. I had the feeling I’d pulled it out a couple of minutes ahead of time, and maybe it had dropped on the floor. I looked under the table—we were on a sort of bench—and I couldn’t find it, then I thought, maybe I’d left it at home! I’m always in a daze, I think, when I’m with Teresa. That’s how it is—I want to faint. When I first see her—every time—I feel I can hardly breathe.”

  Tom closed his eyes for a second in sympathy. “You mustn’t ever look nervous with a girl, Frank, even if you feel nervous.”

  “Yes, sir.— Anyway, that day, Teresa said, ‘I’m sure you haven’t lost it, look again,’ and by this time even the waiter was helping me, and Teresa said she could pay the bill, and when she started to, she found I’d stuck my billfold in her handbag, because I’d had it out ahead of time and I was nervous. That’s the way things always went with Teresa. I’d think things were awful—then things were rather lucky.”

  Tom understood. So could Freud have understood. Was this girl really lucky for Frank? Tom doubted that.

  “I could tell you another story like that, but I don’t want to bore you.”

  What was he getting at? Or did he just want to talk about Teresa?

  “I really want to lose everything, Tom. Even my life, yes. It’s hard for me to say in words. Maybe I could explain it to Teresa or at least say something, but now she doesn’t even care. She’s bored with me.”

  Tom pulled his cigarettes out and lit one. The boy was in a dream world and needed a jolt of reality. “While I’m thinking of it, Frank, your Andrews passport. May I?” Tom gestured toward a straight chair where Frank had hung his jacket.

  “Go ahead, it’s there,” the boy said.

  Tom got it from the inside pocket. “This goes back to Reeves.” Tom cleared his throat and continued. “Shall I tell you that I once murdered a man in this house? Awful, isn’t it? Under this roof.— I could tell you the reason. That picture downstairs over the fireplace, ‘Man in Chair’—” Tom suddenly realized that he couldn’t tell Frank that it was a forgery, and that a lot of Derwatts were forgeries now. When might Frank tell it to someone else months or years from now?

  “Yes, I like it,” Frank said. “The man was stealing it?”

  “No!” Tom put his head back and laughed. “I don’t want to say anymore. We are alike in a way, don’t you think, Frank?” Did he see the least relief in the boy’s eyes or not? “Good night, Frank. I’ll wake you around eight.”

  In his room, Tom found that Mme. Annette had unpacked his suitcase, so he would have to start over again with shaving kit and so on. Heloise’s present, the blue handbag, was on his desk now, still in its white plastic bag. It was in a box, and Tom decided to smuggle the box to her room some time tomorrow morning, so that she would find it after he had gone. Five past eleven now. Tom went downstairs to ring Thurlow, even though there was a telephone in his room.

  Johnny answered, and said that Thurlow was taking a shower.

  “Your brother wants me to come with him tomorrow, so I will,” Tom said. “I mean to America.”

  “Oh. Really? Well!” Johnny sounded pleased. “Here’s Ralph. It’s Tom Ripley,” Johnny said, and passed the telephone to Thurlow.

  Tom explained again. “Can you get a place for me on the same plane, do you think, or shall I try it tonight?”

  “No, I’ll handle it. I’m sure I can do it,” Thurlow said. “This is Frank’s idea?”

  “His wishes, yes.”

  “Okay, Tom. I’ll see you tomorrow around ten then.”

  Tom took another warm shower, and looked forward to sleeping. Just that morning he had been in Hamburg, and what was dear old Reeves doing at this moment? Making another deal with someone over cool white wine in his apartment? Tom decided to leave all his packing until the morning.

  In bed and with the light out, Tom found himself pondering the generation gap, or trying to. Didn’t it turn up in every generation? And didn’t generations overlap, so that one could never point out a definite twenty-five year period of change? Tom tried to imagine what it was like for Frank to have been born when the Beatles were getting started in London (after Hamburg), then making their American tour, and changing the face of pop songs, to have been about seven when a man landed on the moon, when the United Nations as a peacekeeping organization was beginning to be laughed at and to be used. And before that, the League of Nations, hadn’t it been? Ancient history, the League of Nations, which had failed to stop Franco and Hitler. Every generation seemed to have to turn loose of something, and then try desperately to find something new to hang onto. Now for the young it was gurus sometimes, or Hare Krishna, or the cult called the Moonies, and pop music all the time—social protesters sang to their souls sometimes. Falling in love, however, was out of date, Tom had heard or read somewhere, but he had not heard it from Frank. Frank was perhaps exceptional in even admitting that he was in love. “Play it cool, no strong emotions” was the tenet of youth. A lot of young people didn’t believe in marriage, just in living together and having children sometimes.

  Now where was he? Frank had said he wanted to lose himself. Did he mean turning loose of the Pierson family responsibilities? Suicide? Changing his name? What did Frank want to hang on to? Tom’s sleepiness put an end to his efforts. Beyond his window an owl was calling “Chou-ette! Chou-ette!” In early September, Belle Ombre was sliding into autumn and winter.

  20

  Heloise drove Tom and Frank to the Moret railway station, and had offered to drive them to Paris. But she was going to Chantilly tonight to see her parents, so Tom persuaded her not to make the Paris drive besides. She sent them both off with well wishes and an extra kiss for Frank, Tom noticed.

  Tom could not buy a France-Dimanche, the gossip sheet, at the Moret station, but it was the first thing he did when they arrived at the Gare de Lyon. It was only a little after nine, and Tom paused in the station to give the paper a look. He found Frank Pierson on page two, with the familiar old passport picture in one column instead of spread over two or more. MISSING AMERICAN HEIR WAS ON HOLIDAY IN GERMANY said the headline. Tom looked through the column, worried about finding his own name, but it was not there. Had Ralph Thurlow finally done a commendable piece of work? Tom felt relieved.

  “Nothing alarming,” Tom said to Frank. “Want to see it?”

  “No, I don’t, thanks.” Frank lifted his head with what looked like a deliberate effort. He was again in a head-hanging mood.

  They joined the taxi queue and rode to the Lutetia. Thurlow was in the lobby at the desk, paying his bill, in the act of writing a check.

  “Good morning, Tom.— Hello, Frank! Johnny’s upstairs making sure the luggage gets down.”

  Tom and Frank waited. Johnny emerged from an elevator, carrying a couple of airline bags. He smiled at his brother. “You see the Trib this morning?”

  They had left Tom’s house too early to see the Trib, and Tom hadn’t thought of buying it. Johnny informed his brother that the Trib said he had been found in Germany, taking a vacation. And where was Frank supposed to be now, Tom wondered, though he did not put the question.

  Frank said, “I know,” and looked uncomfortable.

  They needed two taxis. Frank wanted to ride with Tom, but Tom suggested that he go with his brother. Tom wanted a few minutes with Ralph Thurlow, for what they might be worth.

  “You’ve known the Piersons for quite a while?” Tom began in a pleasant tone to Thurlow.

  “Yes. I knew John for six or seven years. I was a partner of Jack Diamond. Private detective. Jack went back to San Francisco, where I’m from, but I stayed on in New York.”

  “I’m glad the papers didn’t make much of Frank’s reappearance. Is that due to your efforts?” Tom asked, eager to pay Thurlow a compliment, if he could.

  “I hope so.” Thurlow showed satisfaction. “I did my best to cool it. I’m hoping there’re no journalists at the airport.— Frank hates al
l that, I know.”

  Thurlow smelled of some presumably masculine scent, and Tom inched back into the corner of his seat. “What kind of man was John Pierson?”

  “Oh—” Thurlow slowly lit a cigarette. “A genius, I’m sure. Maybe I can’t figure people like that out. He lived for his work—or money, which was like a score to him. Maybe it gave him emotional security, even more than his family. But he certainly knew his business. Self-made man, too, no rich father to get him started. John started out by buying a grocery store in Connecticut that was going broke, and then he went on from there, always in the food product line.”

  Another source of emotional security, Tom had always heard. Food. Tom waited.

  “His first marriage.— He married a well-to-do Connecticut girl. I think she bored him. Fortunately no children. Then she met another man, maybe with a little more time to give her. So they got a divorce. Quietly.” Thurlow glanced at Tom. “I didn’t know John in those days, but I heard about all this. John was always a hard worker, wanted the best for himself and his family.” Thurlow spoke with some respect.

  “Was he a happy man?”

  Thurlow looked out the window and wagged his head. “Who can be happy trying to manage so much money? It’s like an empire.— A nice wife, Lily, nice sons, nice houses everywhere—but maybe incidental to a man like that. I don’t know. He certainly was a lot happier than Howard Hughes.” Thurlow laughed. “That man lost his mind!”

  “Why do you think John Pierson killed himself?”

  “I’m not sure he did.” Now Thurlow looked at Tom. “What do you mean? Frank said that?” Thurlow’s tone was easy.

  Was Thurlow sounding him out? Trying to sound Frank out? Tom also wagged his head with deliberate slowness, even though the taxi was making a heavy swerve just then to pass a truck on the périphérique as they sped on northward. “No, Frank said nothing. Or he said what the papers said, that it could’ve been an accident or a suicide.— What’s your opinion?’

  Thurlow seemed to ponder, but his thinnish lips had a smile, a safe smile, Tom saw at a glance. “I do think suicide rather than an accident.— I don’t know,” Thurlow assured Tom, “it’s only my guess. He was already in his sixties. How could a man be happy in a wheelchair—for a decade—half-paralyzed? John always tried to be cheerful—but maybe he’d had enough? I don’t know. But I know he’d been to that cliff hundreds of times. There wasn’t any wind to blow him over that day.”